2) Could you describe the combat mechanics? I know you guys are moving away from the conventional model (simply bash your opponent till he loses his hitpoints), but how do the blocking and other special moves work? And will the combat moves be random or research based?

3) Will the economic model be like Warcraft where you create a few peons and send them to work, or like Settlers where you place the buildings and the workers are provided automatically? Personally I think the Settlers model would work best because you can have a deeper economy without much mircroing, and still be able to focus on the miltary issues.

4) About how many total troops will a player be able to create, and how easy would it be to manage them?

On a side note, I like the looks of this game except the orcs look a bit bland. In this picture (http://www.rtscommunity.com/rts/index.php?p=showfile&db_id=14&filename=screen4_oxojlq5flzyw.jpg&field_id=1&field_type=image&item_id=1746) look how the face of the orc in the middle is featureless. I kind of want them to look like http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/5/52/250px-Warcraft_Orcs.jpg or http://www.about-world-of-warcraft.com/images/Orcs.gif

Thanks.

Darvin

08-04-2007, 11:23 AM

Well, some of these questions have already been answered, so I can pass on the info to you.

1) yes, there will be a skirmish mode for both online and offline play to fight individual battles against the AI or other human players.

2,3) good questions, I'll leave em for a dev who knows the mechanics of the game.

4) I believe Reverie is still fine tuning numbers. They've only just decided to go with units built as squads rather than as individuals, so I doubt they've gotten to the point where maximum army sizes are finalized.

5) as far as the faces of orcs go, keep in mind that for all intents and purposes you will never be zoomed in that close during gameplay. Keep in mind that World of Warcraft is a RPG, not a RTS, and is not designed to have hundreds of individuals on screen at a time.

Ryan Zelazny

08-06-2007, 11:25 AM

Hi Dragon01,

Some good questions, I'll provide some answers.

1) As Darvin said, yes there will be an AI option in the Online Skirmish mode. If you don't have any human players, then it will just generate an Offline game, you don't need to be connected to the internet to play a skirmish against AI by yourself.

2) Combat is basically controlled by "dice rolls", much like RPG combat, you will have dice rolls for attack and defense, between the two combatting units. I'm not completely sure on the exact math, but I think how good the attack or defending action works will be determined on the difference between the rolls. E.g. Attack rolls 8, Defense rolls 12, Defending unit would Block & Parry the attack, or Attack Rolls 9, Defense rolls 5, Attack does extra damage from lack of defense.

3) At the moment you have to build your own peasants/workers. I'm not sure how an automatic peasant/worker creation would work, as I haven't played settlers. It would really suck if you were waiting for enough resources to create another group of infantry, when as soon as you got the resources, the game made a peasant and wasted the resources you've been waiting for.

4) Units will be managed in batallions, as Darvin suggested, we are still fine tuning a "cap" for how many units you can create. At the moment, Dawn of Fantasy's Mithril engine can display over 1000 units on screen, so it's safe to say you will get a rather large cap.

5) Again Darvin was right on the ball with his suggestion. Art assets however are not "finished" and we are actually planning on redoing/polishing a lot of the units before release.

Darvin

08-06-2007, 10:59 PM

Interesting dice roll system. One thing I'd like to bring up is to ask how the "overwhelming" concept is being handled. For instance, one feral orc could attack an elite soldier all day and every one of his attacks would be blocked. However, if several orcs are attacking this elite at once, his ability to defend himself is reduced, and can expect to take more damage. Clearly this is how weaker units can expect to take out stronger ones. How is this represented in game mechanics?

As for resource automation, if we take a very simplistic view of the matter, we might look at the model of the Yuri economy in the Red Alert 2 expansion pack. They built slave miners which would be moved to resource sites, and then would deploy slaves to harvest resources nearby. If killed, the slaves would be replaced for free. The idea here is that the player didn't need to manage individual workers, just a single hub which managed the little guys. I could easily see this system extrapolated to a more complex economy where individual workers are not the concern of the player; they are built, replaced, and ordered around by resource collection hubs. These hubs are what the player concerns himself with, not the individual workers.

The Witch King of Angmar

08-07-2007, 08:00 AM

Personally I don't like the dice roll system. I mean it's all right but I would just like to attack and not have to roll every time I want to do something. To me it would distract the player from whats going on and it just seems kind of pointless.

jap88

08-07-2007, 08:35 AM

You don't actually roll dice Witch-king :p It is an automated process within the game. To the player you will not notice much difference from a standard RTS even though there is quite a difference to be had.

Darvin

08-07-2007, 01:05 PM

The "dice roll" is just an abstraction of the concept of randomness. For instance, in D&D games you throw 20 sided dice at least once every few seconds, but the results are just tabulated in a side window that you can view at your leisure. You don't actually have to do anything about it.

By the way, let's get dice terminology clear; 2D10 means two ten sided dice were thrown, resulting in a random number between 2 and 20.

dragon01

08-07-2007, 02:24 PM

Thanks for the response.

The dice roll system will keep the combat interesting. :)

Ryan,

The settlers model will work like this. When you build a stone mine or wood camp or a farm, the building will initially create x number of workers. Then if you want to increase production, you can upgrade the building and extra workers will appear and start working at the place. You can upgrade the building a third time and a few more workers will be provided. This way you only need to manage the buildings and not individual workers. Also, since the player controls when to upgrade, the game will not waste the resources you need to create military units.

On the model detail, people like to zoom in during battles, and many RTS games provide the choice of zooming in up close. I would like this game to give players that choice.

The Witch King of Angmar

08-07-2007, 04:13 PM

You don't actually roll dice Witch-king :p It is an automated process within the game. To the player you will not notice much difference from a standard RTS even though there is quite a difference to be had.

Good because that concept really turned me off. Lol I would probably be the only one on this forum to think that. :p